Arcane Mage Talents

This section of the Arcane Mage guide provides an overview of all talents, information on which talents work well in different situations, and popular builds in Wowhead's talent calculator. This guide is written by Malon, who raids with <Omen> on Emerald Dream EU; his lifelong ambition is to have the Warlock class renamed to 'Fuzzy Cuddlebears'. Find him on Twitter and at Altered-Time mage forums. Updated for the latest patch.

Arkaner Familiar is a solid boost to your capacity, specifically the burn phase, and scales well with gear. However, is the best choice for The Nighthold, especially with our two-piece T19 bonus (). Worte der Macht will help in your conserve phase. but is too random to be a reliable pick.

Tier 2 Talents

Flimmern - Gives Blink two charges, takes it off the global cooldown and makes its usable while casting.

All three of these talents have a specific place. Flimmern is a fantastic upgrade to Blinzeln; the importance of extra manoeuvrability cannot be overstated. The same applies to ; which you take is a matter of personal and encounter choice. Considering the importance of mana for Arcane Mages, is inferior to the other options on this tier.

Tier 3 Talents

Spiegelbild - Creates copies of you which will attack your enemies for 40 seconds. Enemies will prefer to attack them instead of you.

Rune der Kraft - Places a Rune on the ground for 10 seconds. All damage you deal while standing inside is increased by 40%. Two charges.

Fluss des Beschwörers - Steadily increases the damage you deal while in combat, up to 20%, and then decreases to 4%. This cycle repeats every 10 seconds.

Spiegelbild is useful in single-target fights with burst requirements; however, the spell doesn't line up with any of Arcane's other cooldowns, so it's a weaker choice for the spec. On the other hand, Arcane does very well with Rune der Kraft, as it plays to the flavours of frequent burst and immobility. Fluss des Beschwörers is a passive option that will provide solid returns, and should be the go-to option if you are not comfortable with Rune of Power. Arcane Mages can ‘bank' procs of Arcane Missiles to use at high stacks.

Tier 4 Talents

Supernova - Creates an explosion around your target, dealing damage to all enemies and double damage to the primary target. Also knocks enemies into the air.

Aufgeladen can be useful if you are dropping Arcane Charges frequently, i.e. you are using Arkanbeschuss to cleave. For most fights, you will use Supernova against a single target or if burst area-of-effect damage is needed, and Resonanz for sustained AoE.

With the removal of Eisschollen for Arcane Mages, is the best choice in this tier. If you need crowd control, Ring des Frosts can be useful while in the open world, as can Eisschutz (also a reasonable choice in PvP).

Tier 6 Talents

Netherorkan - Places a damage-over-time effect on the target which will also deal damage to enemies nearby. Damage increased by Arcane Charges.

Instabile Magie - Grants your Arkanschlag a 20% chance to explode and deal additional damage to the target and all nearby enemies.

Erosion - Your attacks increase the damage the target takes from your Arcane spells by 1%, stacking up to 8%. This effect lasts for three seconds and then decays at a rate of 1% every second.

Netherorkan is the ability to pick for area-of-effect encounters; make sure to use it at four Arkane Aufladung stacks and, for preference, on a target that will stay alive for the full duration (such as a boss). Instabile Magie was buffed in patch 7.1.5 and is now the best choice in the tier for cleave (2-4 target) encounters. On single-target fights and those with with a priority kill target, Erosion beats out both other options; use Arcane Missiles to stack it up quickly.

is an excellent ability, lengthening your burn phase significantly. has the potential to be very powerful but currently plays badly with Arcane's dislike of haste, as it results in us quickly losing mana. Arkane Kugel is very useful for multi-target fights; its damage was massively buffed (from ~80% to 500% spellpower scaling) in patch 7.1.5.Back to Top